Diamond Twister (iPhone)

Making a great match-three puzzler isn't easy. Sure, anyone can create a game where you have to match up three or more blocks / gems / balls (delete as appropriate), and indeed, hundreds of mobile developers have.

But only a select few realise that to achieve greatness, these games need more than that. It's about the finely-tuned power-ups, the dynamics of combos, the inclusion of different ways to play the core game, and little visual touches to set a game above the herd.

As I said, it's tough, which is why on mobile, Bejeweled – one of the games which nails it – is still a top-seller several years after it was first released.

Its sequel, Bejeweled 2, is one of the more impressive iPhone launch games too, but it's got competition in the form of Gameloft's Diamond Twister.

It's already been released on mobile, and very impressive it was too. The iPhone version brings touchscreen controls and exclusive modes to the game, making it more addictive than ever.

The basic idea follows the genre rule: you swap adjacent gems to make lines of three or more, which then disappear, making the ones above fall down. If that creates similar chains, you'll set off a combo.

Whenever you get a combo, or a four-gem line, you get a special jewel power-up. Burst disappears an entire row when included in a match, Bomb destroys all adjacent gems, and Shatter removes all gems of the same type when tapped. And so on.

The core game offers 64 levels, split between eight locations – cities like New York, Paris, Cairo and Moscow. Completing all eight from a location unlocks the next one, and along the way you also unlock different 'Challenge' modes, which I'll come to later.

Each level sees you trying to earn a certain amount of money from matching the gems, playing against the clock. The amounts rise as you progress through the game, and can seem super-tough, but the key is getting as many combos and power-ups as possible to rack up higher scores faster.

The game looks and sounds great, taking advantage of the iPhone's capabilities. Meanwhile, the touchscreen controls work pretty well too – dragging gems is certainly more intuitive than using a keypad, although if you're fat-fingered, you may occasionally drag the wrong gem, which can be frustrating.

Diamond Twister also uses the iPhone's motion sensors, albeit only to detect whether you're holding the phone in portrait or landscape mode, and let gems fall accordingly. It doesn't seem like an important feature, but can provide an advantage if you're clever.

When you've finished the main mode, there are those Challenge modes to take on, which offer a variety of ways to play the game. So, Flip Mania gets you to 'flip' all the tiles on-screen before time runs out (a tile is flipped when the gem on top of it forms part of a match).

Gem Collector gets you to try and collect a certain number of one specific jewel against the clock, Forget Me Not is a memory-matching game where you're trying to find pairs, and... Well, you get the idea.

These modes provide long-term replayability, not to mention the Endless mode, which lets you play the basic game for as long as you want with no time limit.

Diamond Twister is one of the more addictive examples of the match-three genre that we've seen, and up there with Bejeweled 2 when it comes to iPhone puzzling.

They're both excellent games, but with Diamond Twister being a quid cheaper, it may just edge its established rival.